By Goodwin Ginger,
The Progressive Bloggers moderation team has voted to remove My Blahg from the blogroll by a 5-1 vote. The decision is final. The decision was based on a variety of factors including the nature of the posts, previous history, and reactions from the blogger in question thereafter.
This is just…well ignorant. Between us we have seen almost everything and some of our editorial collective has experience with apartheid. We find no comparison. This is an all time low for Canadian politics. We renounce Progressive Bloggers. Liberal, Anglo horse-shit purveying weak-kneed neophytes. We are disappointed in you, not because you have betrayed us but because we no longer believe in you. We await our renouncement from the board. If you have any editorial stones you will have removed us by the break of dawn
Canadian Observer 
March 6, 2007 at 8:00 am
If that’s a formal request to be removed from the Progressive Bloggers affiliation, I’ll grant it.
March 6, 2007 at 8:02 am
I’ll say this however. The site has currently in its makeup of moderators 2 Liberals, 2 Greens, 1 unaffiliated, and 1 NDP’er, with Wayne the Chief Admin being non-partisan. That vote was 5-1, and the one dissenter did not come from the NDP ranks.
March 6, 2007 at 10:39 am
GG – don’t forget delluded and collaborators. Progressive?!?! Go fuck yourselves.
March 6, 2007 at 11:03 am
It’s not “progressive” to claim total indifference to the carting away and murder of Jews. McClelland does have a right of free expression, but Progressive Bloggers do not have to keep his extremist views around their site.
March 6, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Freedom of expression is not something the Progressive Bloggers can tolerate.
Remember what they did to Popular Doctrine not too long ago and how they treated the blog author like dirt?
March 6, 2007 at 1:47 pm
The PB has become a joke, if they are what represents progress in Canada, we are in a sorry state. The “board” is a bunch of sorry whiners, who are willing to keep regressive right-wing voices proudly featured on their front page while giving the boot to real progressives who have views they disagree with, nice. Hey Scott, if you are still here, enjoy your brown shirt, you deserve it.
March 6, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Scott,
Humanism and terror indeed. Thanks for your quick delisting and all of the posts. You are very efficient. And Bullocks that Cherniak had nothing to do with it. You should read Kinsella’s book.
March 6, 2007 at 5:42 pm
why does the ndp have such a hard time renouncing regressive racist statements??? i really don’t get it. the fact that mclelland remains unappolagetic left progblog no choice in the matter. had he chosen to explain himself and offer an apology, most bloggers would have given him the benefit of the doubt. his recalcitrance belies his prejudices.
March 6, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Um the NDP renounced it fairly quickly as did most dipper bloggers. We even did but like we said there is a difference between uttering something racist and someone being a racist.
This is why political correctness is hated by your average citizen because it fails to make the distinction and acts instead as a sort of criminalization of ignorance. That is why we stood by Robert but not by what he said.
With the help of Cherniak and Kinsella it became a fucking show trial with the dipshits over at PB acting as self appointed commissars delivering their verdict with a fucking Stasi like effeciency. Robert was not going to be bullied in this way so we suspect he bunkered in.
It is interesting that this sort of banishment only works on those who are not actually racist. Those with a well worked out racist ideology could not give a shit.
The real question is why does the moderate left have such a pension for show trials and such weak stomach when it comes to freedom of speech?
March 6, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Well, I hat to break it to you… but Cherniak started his complaints about Robert Monday morning. We got wind of it and were faced with others complaining about it Sunday Afternoon at 4:30pm, when it first appeared on our moderator forums.
So, I’ll repeat what I have said elsewhere: Jason may have been the loudest to complain, and he may be trying to take credit for all that has happened… but in our case, it was nothing to do with Jason. (and I’ve still not read Warren’s site and what he had or has to say about it).
So.. disagree with our decision all you want, but I’m here to tell you you’re chasing conspiracies by claiming W.K and Jason were influencing our decision.
March 6, 2007 at 7:41 pm
Yah but your decision came well after Cherniak and Kinsella got into the act and there is no way the shit-storm the contrived did not affect your decision. That is how negative attack campaigns work: they change the symbolic context in which actors find themselves choosing.
And make a choice you did. Attack the argument not the man.
March 6, 2007 at 10:50 pm
Tribe is such a joke.
March 6, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Tribe is not a joke. Although we think caution was the lesser side of valour.
And this just about sums up the sorry state of the parliamentary left. So cautious they can’t speak to anyone about anything. Hell they can’t even figure out how to trounce conservatives.
March 7, 2007 at 4:45 am
It’s not only the left: no one is allowed to speak their mind anymore. We all have to toe the line of what’s considered “politically correct”.
How can anyone ever have a discussion about issues when certain things are simply off-limits on penalty of being banished from whatever the venue is?
March 7, 2007 at 1:19 pm
I would agree with that as long as you concede that the present form of political correctness is as much determined by the right as it is the center and the left. Try geting any rational conversation about public ownership off the ground and you will see what I mean.
Partly this about the narrowing of political debate to the point where we really have political parties which are varieties of one flavour: more or less reform liberals of different stripes.
In such a context politics becomes about aesthetic taste and judgement not about ideas with the consequence that ideological conflict is mistaken for bad manners.
No Swearing please we are all parishners here in he church of middle class manners.
March 7, 2007 at 5:31 pm
I’ll obey the injunction not to swear, but I’m getting a tad close to it. I haven’t seen such unadorned tripe (if you can have adorned tripe) for a while. Well, actually for a day or so.
Let’s get something straight. The Chern had absolutely knock-all to do with our decision, and Warkins even less. I mean, what could they do to us? In fact, we began the process, as Scott says, a day or so before the little man opened his yap, and the larger one, his eyes.
And let’s get something else straight, while we’re at it: it wasn’t Robert’s initial remark. People can say bizarre things in the heat of the moment. Say you get pissed off at Barack Obama, you call him a “house n—–r.” If you have the slightest pretension to progressiveness,you realize you’ve been a Class A dumbass, hopefully without a lot of prompting. You then fall all over yourself to apologize, and you may not recover even then, but at least you’ve made a good act of contrition. Robert not only refused to apologize, he spent the better part of a day defending his remark, and basically told all his friends to go fly. That’s what motivated the team, not the yapping of the LibDog or the benign gaze of Warren K.
If “freedom of expression” is the issue, let me say unequivocally that no one is urging that Robert’s site be shut down. He’s as free as he’s always been to say anything he likes. But he doesn’t get to be on our progressive blogroll if he’s going to defend a vile comment about not giving a crap if they start rounding up Jews. Period. And if you don’t like it, start your own blogroll. No one’s stopping you.
Finally, hearing from Werner just about takes what’s left of the cake. What, Werner Patels, the fellow who regularly deletes comments at his site, and threatens to sue other bloggers at the drop of a hat? I can take some of this guff from you, Ginger, even your bizarre reference to apartheid, but not from that guy.
Well, on second thought, I can’t. Your little snit does you no credit whatsoever, and frankly I’m out of here before I break my word on that swearing thing.
March 7, 2007 at 6:56 pm
[…] Wed 7 Mar 2007 Reply to Dr. Dawg Posted by canadianobserver under Left Politics , Canadian Politics Dear Dawg with respect to your post in our comments section, […]
March 7, 2007 at 9:37 pm
And of course there is no injunction on profanity here. But we would prefer that it were used with flare.